There are people in the UK well to the left of me whom I respect. They ought to have a party to represent their views. But Your Party seems to me to represent almost no one apart from its activists.
Meanwhile, perhaps the only good thing about Trump is his willingness to fall asleep during utterly pointless meetings.
Charles's summer version of the picture is surprisingly accurate, less details that are concealed by the snow. The rock/bushes/edging is very much typical of the Front Range Colorado urban corridor; was the AI guessing, or did it have some location information? I wish I saw neighbors' windows lit as much as in the holiday picture. The townhouses' interiors are laid out so that the kitchen and living rooms are away from the front windows.
But we’re heading for no rain for at least the first half of December, and that’s usually the month with the precipitation.
When I moved to Colorado 38 years ago, the two big snow months were November and March. I don't do detailed statistical analyses of the history, but my perception is that has shifted to December and April. Maybe only two-three weeks rather than a full month. Spring rain also seems to be later: the foothills used to be much browner by July 4 than they have been in recent years. The monsoon is all over the place. I actually read technical papers about the North American Monsoon, as (a) it's dependent on enough fine-grain details that the models aren't reliable and (b) it's an important part of how the climate actually changes in the Southwest. The best guesses so far seem to be that it will be slightly stronger and later than now.
Perhaps this will motivate those folks in the military to not obey illegal orders.
I seem to be horribly pessimistic today. I find it more likely that it will motivate flag officers to leave the military, to be replaced by officers who will have no problem when Trump/Vance declare martial law and order them to halt the 2028 federal elections. If their big military project in 2027 is pulling the 100,000+ uniformed troops stationed in Europe and Asia home, that will be the real giveaway.
It seems to me that every thread on ObWi has been more or less open in the 17 years I've been hanging around. In fact, my general sense is that "open" threads tend to stay on a single topic more than others do. In that spirit, let me say this on the page-layout theme:
Showing 20 Recent Comments would be better than the current 12.
If paging the Comments is really necessary, I'd appreciate more comments per page, at least.
One trouble with too-frequent posts is that conversations in Comments sometimes fizzle out prematurely, as people move on to comment under the latest post.
In addition to Snarki’s nitpickery, I would also love it if the actual pages of comments were longer, I think it’s distracting to have to turn the page forward and back so much on occasion.
I took the liberty of bumping up the number of comments per page.
At another site, I maintain a WordPress plugin that provides the most comment-centric view of a blog that I've ever seen. The guy who originally wrote it turned it over to that site to do with as they see fit when he abandoned it. Since that turned out to be "Mike keeps it running across new versions of WordPress and PHP", my working assumption is that I am free to install it here. To reassure lj, it doesn't interact with any other settings or plugins, just provides a different view of what's in the database.
[W]ould [ObWi] be better if there were many more threads, like LGM or BJ?
Please, don't strive to be LGM. Four prolific front-pagers (Loomis*, Campos, Lemieux, and Farley), one not-so-prolific but usually more than once-a-week (Rofer), and some others less frequently. Enough comments that threading (and Disqus) is absolutely mandatory. Gods help them, there are even people commenting there who follow me.
I quit reading BJ because they wouldn't rein in the overuse of Xitter links on the front page. Also, last time I looked, they have enough comments that they really ought to be threading.
* Loomis makes me exhausted. In addition to the political commentary, he does his "Erik visits an American grave" series (more than 2,000 posts), a monthly music post grading new albums and listing what he listened to, an irregular monthly post of his reading list, a weekly college football post during the season, and appears to read every comment that goes up. Plus teaching, book writing, etc.
More threads aren’t needed. What I mostly want is to be able to easily find if there are new comments, and read them.
This pretty much sums up my attitude. I think the number of threads we've been having can be a real distraction, and disrupts the easy flow of conversation we've tended to have in the past. Also, IMO, what's in most of them can just as (or more) usefully go in Open Threads. And although historically I may possibly have been the worst at thread discipline, it's become obvious that I am not alone.
In addition to Snarki's nitpickery, I would also love it if the actual pages of comments were longer, I think it's distracting to have to turn the page forward and back so much on occasion.
...and for whatever reason, comment links that one has previously clicked don’t change color...
Visited vs unvisited link color changes are traditionally a browser preference setting. (Keeping track of it server side across logins and sessions and addresses is hard, and doing a lookup for every link included in every generated page is expensive.) In the current version of Firefox on Linux it's buried in Edit/Settings/General/Contrast Control.
On Your Party, and lj's question, IMO the whole phenomenon demonstrates yet again the factionalism of the far/mid left, and its incredibly self-defeating tendency which seems to (in fact if not in theory) value purity and virtue as against electoral success and the ability to actually achieve anything. There's no question that there are "stubborn attitudes to anything on the left", although admittedly not in the same league as in the US, but the far/mid left makes it awfully easy for them. The Monty Python sketch has never been far from mind during these developments.
On the war crimes in the Caribbean, I note that Hegseth seems to have decided to throw the admiral, who he ordered to kill the survivors, under the bus. Perhaps this will motivate those folks in the military to not obey illegal orders. If not just because they are illegal, then to avoid being scapegoated for following those illegal orders.
The Mad King's Court of Fools Cabinet meeting is...well, a laugh or cry thing. One of the most astonishing aspects of it is that it was videoed and the video made public. The lack of self-awareness...Neom thanking Trump for keeping hurricanes away, Rubio saying that Trump alone can bring peace to the world while Trump slumps next to him, clearly asleep. The meeting started with one of Trump's hour-long rants about Biden. Apparently, that took up all of his energy because he kept nodding off during the rest of the meeting. His sycophants literally watched him sleeping through their suck up attempts. ‘Taking the gloves off’: Trump just held the Cabinet meeting from Hell | The Independent Absolute lunacy.
More threads aren't needed.
What I mostly want is to be able to easily find if there are new comments, and read them.
So: too much stuff at the top of the page, requiring scrolling down a page or two, and for whatever reason, comment links that one has previously clicked don't change color, making it harder to tell if there are new comments beyond what was previously read.
Nit pickery! It's all nit-pickery! Maybe I should demand a refund!
Would ObWi would be better if there were many more threads, like LGM or BJ?
I realize that you weren't asking me. But IMHO anything over 1 per day is way excessive. There might be special cases. But in general there really aren't enough of us commenting here to make it necessary.
So I’m asking the UKians if the whole thing is a farce or reflects stubborn attitudes to anything on the left. Or both.
Or, just for completeness, stubborn attitudes of anyone on the left. Not saying that the left is particularly inflexible. Just that, given how far away we are, that's also a possibility.
Michael, I did get the pillow, and I can see why it works perfectly for you and many others. And it sometimes works well for me, but not always. I can't really say why. I had to take a fair amount of the hulls out because it was too full and unwieldy to begin with, and since then I use it intermittently. In fact, I alternate between three pillows, changing when the pain starts coming back. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was.
On other matters, unfortunately I was too late for the Black Friday Apple TV deal, but I will be keeping my eye on it. I may cancel my Netflix sub after I finally get round to watching The Ballad of Wallis Island, since I normally watch nothing on there from one month to the next, and if I do I'll probably get Apple.
The novel variations in winds around the pole are having consequences in lots of places. In California, we've had some unseasonably warm spells. But the serious issue is rain/snow. Lack of. Last winter we got enough to refill the reservoirs. But we're heading for no rain for at least the first half of December, and that's usually the month with the precipitation.
cleek, that was the point. No work requirements though. The anona was not sufficient for a full family anyway. And rents in Rome were extremely high too (worse than NY City).
Well, full time work in several jobs and still in need of food assistance is indeed a parallel. A major difference is that any politician proposing cutting the anona would have quickly met a sticky end. And actually cutting it almost killed an emperor or two. The threat level is not yet as high in the US.
Btw, 'deserving poor' almost required "...". The main criteria were not necessarily actual need (again one could see parallels).
A discussion of early Christianity needs to consider the practices and institutions of Second Temple Judaism in addition to those of Rome. And those include the tzedekah, which was a mandatory tithe for helping the poor as well as travelers.
It was administered through religious institutions - the temple, and then synagogues during the early Rabbinic period - but there was no clear line between those religious institutions and civic or municipal government. To the degree that the Jewish community was self-governing during Roman occupation, the religious institutions *were* the government.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
There are people in the UK well to the left of me whom I respect. They ought to have a party to represent their views. But Your Party seems to me to represent almost no one apart from its activists.
Meanwhile, perhaps the only good thing about Trump is his willingness to fall asleep during utterly pointless meetings.
On “Open Thread”
Charles's summer version of the picture is surprisingly accurate, less details that are concealed by the snow. The rock/bushes/edging is very much typical of the Front Range Colorado urban corridor; was the AI guessing, or did it have some location information? I wish I saw neighbors' windows lit as much as in the holiday picture. The townhouses' interiors are laid out so that the kitchen and living rooms are away from the front windows.
"
But we’re heading for no rain for at least the first half of December, and that’s usually the month with the precipitation.
When I moved to Colorado 38 years ago, the two big snow months were November and March. I don't do detailed statistical analyses of the history, but my perception is that has shifted to December and April. Maybe only two-three weeks rather than a full month. Spring rain also seems to be later: the foothills used to be much browner by July 4 than they have been in recent years. The monsoon is all over the place. I actually read technical papers about the North American Monsoon, as (a) it's dependent on enough fine-grain details that the models aren't reliable and (b) it's an important part of how the climate actually changes in the Southwest. The best guesses so far seem to be that it will be slightly stronger and later than now.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
Perhaps this will motivate those folks in the military to not obey illegal orders.
I seem to be horribly pessimistic today. I find it more likely that it will motivate flag officers to leave the military, to be replaced by officers who will have no problem when Trump/Vance declare martial law and order them to halt the 2028 federal elections. If their big military project in 2027 is pulling the 100,000+ uniformed troops stationed in Europe and Asia home, that will be the real giveaway.
On “Open Thread”
It seems to me that every thread on ObWi has been more or less open in the 17 years I've been hanging around. In fact, my general sense is that "open" threads tend to stay on a single topic more than others do. In that spirit, let me say this on the page-layout theme:
Showing 20 Recent Comments would be better than the current 12.
If paging the Comments is really necessary, I'd appreciate more comments per page, at least.
One trouble with too-frequent posts is that conversations in Comments sometimes fizzle out prematurely, as people move on to comment under the latest post.
Please excuse my nitpicking. Carry on.
--TP
"
In addition to Snarki’s nitpickery, I would also love it if the actual pages of comments were longer, I think it’s distracting to have to turn the page forward and back so much on occasion.
I took the liberty of bumping up the number of comments per page.
At another site, I maintain a WordPress plugin that provides the most comment-centric view of a blog that I've ever seen. The guy who originally wrote it turned it over to that site to do with as they see fit when he abandoned it. Since that turned out to be "Mike keeps it running across new versions of WordPress and PHP", my working assumption is that I am free to install it here. To reassure lj, it doesn't interact with any other settings or plugins, just provides a different view of what's in the database.
"
[W]ould [ObWi] be better if there were many more threads, like LGM or BJ?
Please, don't strive to be LGM. Four prolific front-pagers (Loomis*, Campos, Lemieux, and Farley), one not-so-prolific but usually more than once-a-week (Rofer), and some others less frequently. Enough comments that threading (and Disqus) is absolutely mandatory. Gods help them, there are even people commenting there who follow me.
I quit reading BJ because they wouldn't rein in the overuse of Xitter links on the front page. Also, last time I looked, they have enough comments that they really ought to be threading.
* Loomis makes me exhausted. In addition to the political commentary, he does his "Erik visits an American grave" series (more than 2,000 posts), a monthly music post grading new albums and listing what he listened to, an irregular monthly post of his reading list, a weekly college football post during the season, and appears to read every comment that goes up. Plus teaching, book writing, etc.
"
More threads aren’t needed.
What I mostly want is to be able to easily find if there are new comments, and read them.
This pretty much sums up my attitude. I think the number of threads we've been having can be a real distraction, and disrupts the easy flow of conversation we've tended to have in the past. Also, IMO, what's in most of them can just as (or more) usefully go in Open Threads. And although historically I may possibly have been the worst at thread discipline, it's become obvious that I am not alone.
In addition to Snarki's nitpickery, I would also love it if the actual pages of comments were longer, I think it's distracting to have to turn the page forward and back so much on occasion.
Anyone else's MMV on all of this, of course.
"
...and for whatever reason, comment links that one has previously clicked don’t change color...
Visited vs unvisited link color changes are traditionally a browser preference setting. (Keeping track of it server side across logins and sessions and addresses is hard, and doing a lookup for every link included in every generated page is expensive.) In the current version of Firefox on Linux it's buried in Edit/Settings/General/Contrast Control.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
On Your Party, and lj's question, IMO the whole phenomenon demonstrates yet again the factionalism of the far/mid left, and its incredibly self-defeating tendency which seems to (in fact if not in theory) value purity and virtue as against electoral success and the ability to actually achieve anything. There's no question that there are "stubborn attitudes to anything on the left", although admittedly not in the same league as in the US, but the far/mid left makes it awfully easy for them. The Monty Python sketch has never been far from mind during these developments.
"
On the war crimes in the Caribbean, I note that Hegseth seems to have decided to throw the admiral, who he ordered to kill the survivors, under the bus. Perhaps this will motivate those folks in the military to not obey illegal orders. If not just because they are illegal, then to avoid being scapegoated for following those illegal orders.
On “Open Thread”
It's about that time of year...
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
The Mad King's Court of Fools Cabinet meeting is...well, a laugh or cry thing. One of the most astonishing aspects of it is that it was videoed and the video made public. The lack of self-awareness...Neom thanking Trump for keeping hurricanes away, Rubio saying that Trump alone can bring peace to the world while Trump slumps next to him, clearly asleep. The meeting started with one of Trump's hour-long rants about Biden. Apparently, that took up all of his energy because he kept nodding off during the rest of the meeting. His sycophants literally watched him sleeping through their suck up attempts. ‘Taking the gloves off’: Trump just held the Cabinet meeting from Hell | The Independent Absolute lunacy.
On “Open Thread”
More threads aren't needed.
What I mostly want is to be able to easily find if there are new comments, and read them.
So: too much stuff at the top of the page, requiring scrolling down a page or two, and for whatever reason, comment links that one has previously clicked don't change color, making it harder to tell if there are new comments beyond what was previously read.
Nit pickery! It's all nit-pickery! Maybe I should demand a refund!
"
Would ObWi would be better if there were many more threads, like LGM or BJ?
I realize that you weren't asking me. But IMHO anything over 1 per day is way excessive. There might be special cases. But in general there really aren't enough of us commenting here to make it necessary.
On “It’s Your Party, you can cry if…”
So I’m asking the UKians if the whole thing is a farce or reflects stubborn attitudes to anything on the left. Or both.
Or, just for completeness, stubborn attitudes of anyone on the left. Not saying that the left is particularly inflexible. Just that, given how far away we are, that's also a possibility.
On “Open Thread”
I wish it were summer...
"
lj, is it your belief that ObWi would be better if there were many more threads, like LGM or BJ?
"
A proper Open Thread! Oh frabjous day!
Michael, I did get the pillow, and I can see why it works perfectly for you and many others. And it sometimes works well for me, but not always. I can't really say why. I had to take a fair amount of the hulls out because it was too full and unwieldy to begin with, and since then I use it intermittently. In fact, I alternate between three pillows, changing when the pain starts coming back. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than it was.
On other matters, unfortunately I was too late for the Black Friday Apple TV deal, but I will be keeping my eye on it. I may cancel my Netflix sub after I finally get round to watching The Ballad of Wallis Island, since I normally watch nothing on there from one month to the next, and if I do I'll probably get Apple.
"
The novel variations in winds around the pole are having consequences in lots of places. In California, we've had some unseasonably warm spells. But the serious issue is rain/snow. Lack of. Last winter we got enough to refill the reservoirs. But we're heading for no rain for at least the first half of December, and that's usually the month with the precipitation.
"
First snow...
On “Am I missing something?”
cleek, that was the point. No work requirements though. The anona was not sufficient for a full family anyway. And rents in Rome were extremely high too (worse than NY City).
Well, full time work in several jobs and still in need of food assistance is indeed a parallel. A major difference is that any politician proposing cutting the anona would have quickly met a sticky end. And actually cutting it almost killed an emperor or two. The threat level is not yet as high in the US.
Btw, 'deserving poor' almost required "...". The main criteria were not necessarily actual need (again one could see parallels).
"
To the degree that the Jewish community was self-governing during Roman occupation, the religious institutions *were* the government.
The Christian nationalists would be ecstatic to implement that model. Even if they reject the bits about caring for the poor.
"
A discussion of early Christianity needs to consider the practices and institutions of Second Temple Judaism in addition to those of Rome. And those include the tzedekah, which was a mandatory tithe for helping the poor as well as travelers.
It was administered through religious institutions - the temple, and then synagogues during the early Rabbinic period - but there was no clear line between those religious institutions and civic or municipal government. To the degree that the Jewish community was self-governing during Roman occupation, the religious institutions *were* the government.
"
but the Roman anona was only for the deserving poor and their number was limited by law (and excluded migrants).
just like the US.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.